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I feel like there is a tendency for technology to overpromise by offering solutions to the wrong problems. To take your example, what is the fundamental issue w

I feel like there is a tendency for technology to overpromise by offering solutions to the wrong problems. To take your example, what is the fundamental issue with elections? I would say that it is that the optimal number of people for deliberative decision making is probably around Dunbar's number, certainly not millions. When you have millions of people, it is purely a media game, so decision quality falls off a cliff. So I doubt general elections can ever yield better results than they currently do, regardless of the voting system and regardless of technology. So my general skepticism regarding blockchain is that it presents technological solutions to social problems (so it won't work). AI is different since it's a bit all over the place. In principle, it aims to solve problems that are obviously worth solving, but as long as it will fall short of its promises, the partial solutions we do get are kind of a mixed bag: if we need to keep a human in the loop or at the wheel, it's suddenly a lot less attractive. And the path to the AI being good enough to be trusted is nebulous at best. But we'll see. As for PCs, their utility has always been obvious and the roadmap clear.

EGreg 4y ago
The fundamental issue is that elections are too expensive so we don’t do collective decision making that often, and usually only for our state or national governments. People tend to elect representatives for long terms instead and then complain about them, rather than delegating their vote to experts or trying other systems like Ranked Choice Voting. Many people complain about having to travel far to a polling booth, and disenfranchisement, whereas they could vote for their phone. Elderly and minorities in rural areas often have bad access. If elections were cheap, people could easily engage in collective decision making of various types and choose various ways yo tally votes. None of that is possible today, we are like the people before computers, or before the industrial revolution - having a limited number of options, newspapers, etv. We would also have more confidence in the results as we’d check using the Merkle tree that our vote was counted. It would be user friendly to do so. And we could also implement many of the results on-chain, such as how much UBI to give out in our own community’s currency, or how much to tax transactions. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Just see https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications
- breuleux 4y ago
  My point is that general elections are intrinsically mediocre at decision making. You can make them cheaper, more efficient, make sure everyone can vote, add a delegation system, and so on, but you'd just be polishing a turd. It's pointless to improve voting technology if people don't understand the ramifications of what they vote for, and they will never know that unless they invest hundreds of hours of careful study into it. If everyone does this, there is no way it won't be insanely expensive. IMHO there is a very simple solution to all of these issues that could have been implemented a century ago: pick representatives at random. Send them all to the capital, lodge them and pay them to think about the issues full time, talk to experts directly, interview candidates for Prime Minister and other executive positions directly, coordinate with each other, and so on. Give people the time and the information they require in order to cast the very best votes they are capable of.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    I'd say the very simple solution is to have representatives decide. Then there's a separate debate about how to the representatives are assigned. At random, based on voting, based on competitive self-appointment by means of heavy weaponry, etc. Blockchain may or may not make it easier to bypass the concept of having representatives decide, but this assumes we'd want to in the first place, which I am in full agreement with you: this is a feature, not a bug, so I don't wanna, so I don't need blockchain.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  The fundamental issue with elections is that the mob is easily swayed and because most of us are unqualified to hold opinions about most things. What is best or true is not decided by majority vote. Never in a million years would I want mob rule. I don't know where this strange doctrine of mob wisdom came from, but it is dangerous and false. The vote is open to all adult citizens only because we need a hedge against corruption in leadership, and even then, it is a vote for leadership, not a system of referenda and direct democracy. Even this "hedge" can easily enable corruption and vote the worst tyrants into power. And the reason we localize voting, or should do so, is because of the principle of subsidiary.

EGreg 4y ago

The fundamental issue is that elections are too expensive so we don’t do collective decision making that often, and usually only for our state or national governments. People tend to elect representatives for long terms instead and then complain about them, rather than delegating their vote to experts or trying other systems like Ranked Choice Voting. Many people complain about having to travel far to a polling booth, and disenfranchisement, whereas they could vote for their phone. Elderly and minorities in rural areas often have bad access. If elections were cheap, people could easily engage in collective decision making of various types and choose various ways yo tally votes. None of that is possible today, we are like the people before computers, or before the industrial revolution - having a limited number of options, newspapers, etv. We would also have more confidence in the results as we’d check using the Merkle tree that our vote was counted. It would be user friendly to do so. And we could also implement many of the results on-chain, such as how much UBI to give out in our own community’s currency, or how much to tax transactions. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Just see https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications

breuleux 4y ago
My point is that general elections are intrinsically mediocre at decision making. You can make them cheaper, more efficient, make sure everyone can vote, add a delegation system, and so on, but you'd just be polishing a turd. It's pointless to improve voting technology if people don't understand the ramifications of what they vote for, and they will never know that unless they invest hundreds of hours of careful study into it. If everyone does this, there is no way it won't be insanely expensive. IMHO there is a very simple solution to all of these issues that could have been implemented a century ago: pick representatives at random. Send them all to the capital, lodge them and pay them to think about the issues full time, talk to experts directly, interview candidates for Prime Minister and other executive positions directly, coordinate with each other, and so on. Give people the time and the information they require in order to cast the very best votes they are capable of.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  I'd say the very simple solution is to have representatives decide. Then there's a separate debate about how to the representatives are assigned. At random, based on voting, based on competitive self-appointment by means of heavy weaponry, etc. Blockchain may or may not make it easier to bypass the concept of having representatives decide, but this assumes we'd want to in the first place, which I am in full agreement with you: this is a feature, not a bug, so I don't wanna, so I don't need blockchain.
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
The fundamental issue with elections is that the mob is easily swayed and because most of us are unqualified to hold opinions about most things. What is best or true is not decided by majority vote. Never in a million years would I want mob rule. I don't know where this strange doctrine of mob wisdom came from, but it is dangerous and false. The vote is open to all adult citizens only because we need a hedge against corruption in leadership, and even then, it is a vote for leadership, not a system of referenda and direct democracy. Even this "hedge" can easily enable corruption and vote the worst tyrants into power. And the reason we localize voting, or should do so, is because of the principle of subsidiary.